WHAT IS A MADHHAB? WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO
FOLLOW ONE?

Q-News Interview, ? Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995

The word madhhab is derived from an Arabic word meaning
"to go" or "to take as a way", and refers to
a mujtahids choice in regard to a number of interpretive
possibilities in deriving the rule of Allah from the primary
texts of the Qur'an and hadith on a particular question. In a
larger sense, a madhhab represents the entire school of
thought of a particular mujtahid Imam, such as Abu Hanifa, Malik,
Shafi'i, or Ahmad--together with many first-rank scholars that
came after each of these in their respective schools, who checked
their evidences and refined and upgraded their work. The mujtahid
Imams were thus explainers, who operationalized the Qur'an and
sunna in the specific shari'a rulings in our lives that are
collectively known as fiqh or "jurisprudence". In
relation to our din or "religion", this fiqh is only
part of it, for the religious knowledge each of us possesses is
of three types. The first type is the general knowledge of tenets
of Islamic belief in the oneness of Allah, in His angels, Books,
messengers, the prophethood of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give
him peace), and so on. All of us may derive this knowledge
directly from the Qur'an and hadith, as is also the case with a
second type of knowledge, that of general Islamic ethical
principles to do good, avoid evil, cooperate with others in good
works, and so forth. Every Muslim can take these general
principles, which form the largest and most important part of his
religion, from the Qur'an and hadith.

The third type of knowledge is that of the specific
understanding of particular divine commands and prohibitions that
make up the shari'a. Here, because of both the nature and the
sheer number of the Qur'an and hadith texts involved, people
differ in the scholarly capacity to understand and deduce rulings
from them. But all of us have been commanded to live them in our
lives, in obedience to Allah, and so Muslims are of two types,
those who can do this by themselves, and they are the mujtahid
Imams; and those who must do so by means of another, that is, by
following a mujtahid Imam, in accordance with Allahs word in
surat al-Nahl, "Ask those who recall, if you know
not" (Qur'an 16:43), and in surat al-Nisa,
"If they had referred it to the Messenger and to those of
authority among them, then those of them whose task it is to find
it out would have known the matter" (Qur'an 4:83),
in which the phrase those of them whose task it is to find it
out, expresses the words "alladhina yastanbitunahu
minhum", referring to those possessing the capacity
to draw inferences directly from the evidence, which is called in
Arabic "istinbat".

These and other verses and hadiths oblige the believer who is
not at the level of istinbat or directly deriving rulings from
the Qur'an and hadith to ask and follow someone in such rulings
who is at this level. It is not difficult to see why Allah has
obliged us to ask experts, for if each of us were personally
responsible for evaluating all the primary texts relating to each
question, a lifetime of study would hardly be enough for it, and
one would either have to give up earning a living or give up ones
din, which is why Allah says in surat al-Tawba, in the context of
jihad:

"Not all of the believers should go to fight. Of
every section of them, why does not one part alone go forth, that
the rest may gain knowledge of the religion and admonish their
people when they return, that perhaps they may take warning" (Qur'an
9:122).

The slogans we hear today about "following the Qur'an and
sunna instead of following the madhhabs" are wide of
the mark, for everyone agrees that we must follow the Qur'an and
the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace).
The point is that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) is no longer alive to personally teach us, and everything
we have from him, whether the hadith or the Qur'an, has been
conveyed to us through Islamic scholars. So it is not a question
of whether or not to take our din from scholars, but rather, from
which scholars. And this is the reason we have madhhabs in
Islam: because the excellence and superiority of the scholarship
of the mujtahid Imams--together with the traditional scholars who
followed in each of their schools and evaluated and upgraded
their work after them--have met the test of scholarly
investigation and won the confidence of thinking and practicing
Muslims for all the centuries of Islamic greatness. The reason
why madhhabs exist, the benefit of them, past, present,
and future, is that they furnish thousands of sound,
knowledge-based answers to Muslims questions on how to obey
Allah. Muslims have realized that to follow a madhhab
means to follow a super scholar who not only had a comprehensive
knowledge of the Qur'an and hadith texts relating to each issue
he gave judgements on, but also lived in an age a millennium
closer to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and
his Companions, when taqwa or "godfearingness" was the
norm--both of which conditions are in striking contrast to the
scholarship available today.

While the call for a return to the Qur'an and sunna is an
attractive slogan, in reality it is a great leap backward, a call
to abandon centuries of detailed, case-by-case Islamic
scholarship in finding and spelling out the commands of the
Qur'an and sunna, a highly sophisticated, interdisciplinary
effort by mujtahids, hadith specialists, Qur'anic exegetes,
lexicographers, and other masters of the Islamic legal sciences.
To abandon the fruits of this research, the Islamic shari'a, for
the following of contemporary sheikhs who, despite the claims,
are not at the level of their predecessors, is a replacement of
something tried and proven for something at best tentative.

The rhetoric of following the shari'a without following a
particular madhhab is like a person going down to a car
dealer to buy a car, but insisting it not be any known
make--neither a Volkswagen nor Rolls- Royce nor Chevrolet--but
rather "a car, pure and simple". Such a person does not
really know what he wants; the cars on the lot do not come like
that, but only in kinds. The salesman may be forgiven a slight
smile, and can only point out that sophisticated products come
from sophisticated means of production, from factories with a
division of labor among those who test, produce, and assemble the
many parts of the finished product. It is the nature of such
collective human efforts to produce something far better than any
of us alone could produce from scratch, even if given a forge and
tools, and fifty years, or even a thousand. And so it is with the
shari'a, which is more complex than any car because it deals with
the universe of human actions and a wide interpretive range of
sacred texts. This is why discarding the monumental scholarship
of the madhhabs in operationalizing the Qur'an and sunna
in order to adopt the understanding of a contemporary sheikh is
not just a mistaken opinion. It is scrapping a Mercedes for a
go-cart.

? Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995

Blessings and Peace on the Mercy
Bestowed to the Worlds, his Family, and his Companions.